Justin Forsyth2015-03-03T19:44:36-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=justin-forsythCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Justin ForsythGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Human Cost of Ebolatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.66021582015-02-03T05:45:40-05:002015-02-04T06:59:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
I met 15-year-old Joshua, a survivor, and his mother Gbassy in a small health clinic a few hours drive from the capital Freetown. Joshua had been discharged from Save the Children's treatment centre on New Year's Day with his 10-year-old brother. His mother had also survived at another treatment centre but his four-month sister, one-year and four-year old brothers all died. So did his father and fifteen other members of his extended family.

Like so many children here, Joshua is still in shock and traumatised by his experience. Although I saw glimpses of a smile and learnt of his passion for football, for the most part he barely spoke. His head hung low, he looked at the ground unable to make eye contact. He can't remember his time in the treatment centre. He has blocked out all the pain. His mother explained how they were surviving on the Save the Children discharge package of food supplies and though the neighbours were very supportive she feared for the future. How would she feed her surviving children? How could she afford health care? Joshua had hurt his arm and had come to the Tombo clinic. The cost of Ebola is not just lives lost but the challenges now facing survivors and the wider community.

A few days earlier I'd met another remarkable survivor, Daniel, aged 18. He had been discharged from Kerry Town on 21 November last year. He lost his mother, elder brother, one sister and 19 other family members. He described the immense physical pain of Ebola as like "having an axe in your head", how frightening being in a treatment centre was, thinking you were going to die; how his sister Cecilia gave up the will to live after their brother died right next to them; how he pleaded with her to fight on and beat Ebola. How he gave her hope. He recovered before her but he stayed in the centre to look after her and they left together. Daniel wants to be a doctor and is now working with his sister at Kerry Town to support children in a specialist ward.

The good news is the number of infections in Sierra Leone is coming down. In the last few days there have only been around 10 cases a day - less than 100 cases last week in the whole of West Africa. But whilst the Ebola crisis is not over and the biggest risk now is complacency, it does feel like the battle is at last being won.

It has not been a fight without terrible casualties. The impact of the epidemic is enormous - on children like Joshua and Daniel and their families - but also much more widely. 221 health workers in Sierra Leone have lost their lives of a total of 1536 in a country with a huge shortage before Ebola struck. At the children's hospital in Freetown you realise the impact of every health workers' death. They lost one of their most impressive doctors last year. They now have only three for a 200-bed hospital. This means they have to work 24 hours a day.

During the peak of the crisis, some rural clinics closed - up to half in some areas. As panic engulfed the country, patients feared they would get Ebola from health centres and so refused to go to them only to die at home from treatable illnesses like malaria, pneumonia and diabetes. The Ministry of Health estimate there was a 39% drop in children coming to clinics to be treated for malaria and a 21% drop in child immunisation. Pregnant mums didn't come to give birth. At Tombo health clinic the midwife Justina showed me the wall chart of births and pointed out the sudden drop - by half - at the peak of the Ebola crisis. Mums told me how they feared getting infected or being sent to an isolation unit. Despite a huge and effective public education campaign there are still many myths - one survivor told me she thought she got Ebola from her malaria medicine.

It is not just health services that have been affected. Schools have been closed since last March. Children will soon have missed a year's education and although there have been innovative programmes to help children learn through the radio, the impact will be profound for each child's future. The consequences of not going to school has had a specific and devastating impact on girls.

A girls group I met told me how they had become more vulnerable to older men forcing them to have sex, as they were no longer at school during the day. And as the economy grinds to a halt, the increase in poverty has led to girls having sex for money. One girl said they can get paid as little as 15p. This amazing girls group were fighting this sexual exploitation and doing a survey on teenage pregnancy. When I asked them what they wanted to do in life they all said to go to university and study to be lawyers, doctors and NGO workers. These girls thankfully didn't contract Ebola, but they are casualties of the crisis. Through lockdown and the effect on the education system, it has threatened to rob their future too.

Ebola is not over. But as we begin to get to get on top of the immediate crisis in all three countries - which will take continued focus and drive - we also need to begin to think about the future. There is a big debate raging in all three countries on the lessons of what went wrong and what worked. We need to make a commitment to help these countries build a better future. This will take international support and solidarity. But we don't want to go back to the past.

All the Sierra Leoneans I met talked about making sure this tragedy becomes a launch pad for something better. This will mean building a health system stronger than before, harnessing the huge expertise built both in terms of national systems and training of thousands of health workers and it will mean a huge education push to reopen schools and then to use them as a basis for better infection control through involving the children themselves. It will mean harnessing the remarkable coalition that came together to fight Ebola - from the Sierra Leonean government to the Cuban and NHS volunteers to the NGOs, UKaid, the MoD to the UN, EU and WB and private sector - to help build a stronger and more resilient system that puts the needs of the brave people of the region first.

As I got up to leave, Joshua slowly raised his head to show tearful eyes. "It's hard when I think of it", he said, still clutching his 'Survivor Certificate', evidence that despite everything, Joshua beat Ebola. He's still shaky on his feet but he's looking forward to playing football and crucially, going back to school. Like his country, he's making early steps towards recovery and we have a duty to both to stand side by side with them until they're strong enough to flourish again.]]>Peshawar Bombings: Every Child's Right to Educationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.63555382014-12-19T13:04:16-05:002015-02-18T05:59:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
But unfortunately the brutal attack in Pakistan is not a one off: schools are targeted in bloody conflicts across the world, from Syria to Nigeria. It must stop.

On the very day of the Pakistan school attack this week, we made a key step in the right direction. Some 40 countries, led by Norway and Argentina, together with ten international organisations, met in Geneva to increase the protection of children in conflict and unveil the "Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict". Some 29 states have already made public statements in support of these Guidelines; as have a number of armed non-state actors.

What we have witnessed this week must make more states join in solidarity with this cause and make similar calls to action. None more so than the UK Government. I urge the UK to make a statement in support of the Guidelines, and show leadership by stating that the UK's military policy and practice already complies with the Guidelines and outlining any further steps that the UK will take to implement or promote the Guidelines.

The attack in Peshawar came a week after we applauded Malala's peace prize award, herself a victim of the Taliban's crusade against education, for standing up for a child's right to go to school but to also feel safe in doing so.

Malala's plight, her award, and now this fresh attack, has brought international attention to the prevalence of attacks on education around the world and particularly the scale of the issue in Pakistan where (along with Afghanistan) there have been more attacks on education annually than almost anywhere else in the world. Between 2009 and 2012, over 838 attacks on schools in Pakistan have left hundreds of schools destroyed and claimed the lives of even more Pakistani students and teachers.

While the Pakistan school attack is one of the worst we have seen, the reality is that this style of attack, where students and schools are seen as strategic targets in military operations, is a regular and disturbing occurrence - in the past five years, there have been a staggering 9,500 attacks on schools in 70 countries.

When I think of what has happened in Pakistan, it reminds me of school attacks in Syria and, in particular, the double school bombing in Homs where 41 children were killed and the children's art exhibition attack where 33 children also lost their lives. It also makes me ponder the 153 Syrian school children kidnapped as they walked home after taking their school exams in May this year, most of whom were not released until many months later and some are still held hostage. And, we cannot forget the hundreds of schools girls taken in Nigeria, who to this day are still to be found.

When I read the reports on the Pakistan attack and the eyewitness accounts of how children and teachers were systematically targeted and the countless atrocities that occurred, it is hard to not agree that we are at a turning point and we must do all we can to stop attacks on school children and schools. The spotlight on this issue could not be brighter and the call on the international community to once and for all protect education from attack is stronger than ever.

We must do more and we have to do more. Children in every corner of the world must be able to leave for school in the morning secure in the knowledge that when they are in class they will be safe. This is their right.]]>Risking a Lost Generation in the Middle Easttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.56909562014-08-19T19:00:00-04:002014-10-19T05:59:02-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
The impact of these crises is felt most of all by those children. They are born into situations they cannot control, yet they bear the brunt of war, displacement, and social and economic turmoil. If we do not act to stem the crisis and ensure children are able to continue their lives and education, we run the risk of losing a generation of children.

Through Save the Children's work, I have met children all over the world who have been through terrible experiences in wars and natural disasters. But some of the things I have seen and heard in the Middle East have shocked me the most. Speaking to 13-year-old Walid, for example, a Syrian refugee who told me in short, stilted sentences about the severed body parts he had found in the burnt-out shell of his grandfather's house. Hearing those young Syrian voices talking about rocket attacks, of limbs littering the streets, of dead family members, brings home the terrible price paid by the region's children for political failures.

There are the immediate and visceral impacts of conflicts on children - lost limbs, lost homes, lost lives. More than 400 children have been killed in the latest short war in Gaza, and thousands more have been injured. In Iraq, over half of the 1.2m people who have been forced to leave their homes are children. There are horrifying reports of babies and toddlers from Iraq's Yazidi community, fleeing for their lives in the searing heat, dying of thirst and exposure. And in Syria, whose brutal civil war has played out for more than three years, over 10,000 children have lost their lives. Millions more have been displaced.

Most people cannot fail to be moved by this horrible roll-call of child suffering. When journalists show their plight, it often prompts the public to donate to aid agencies and governments to pledge greater funds for humanitarian relief. This is important, and allows us to provide immediate, life-saving help to families in desperate situations.

But once the news crews move away and the fighting subsides, children will continue to pay the price for these conflicts. The long-term impacts are huge and devastating.

The psychological trauma inflicted when children lose their parents, see their homes destroyed, or experience torture, is not easily alleviated, particularly when they have to remain in the stressful and unfamiliar environment of a refugee camp. Save the Children's staff see the signs of this in places like Syria and Gaza, from night terrors and bed wetting to children who refuse to speak.

The impact, too, on children's education, cannot be over-estimated. Students across the Middle East are due to be going back to school this month to start the new term - but many will find that their school has been bombed, or occupied by the military, or is now home to hundreds of displaced families. It is thought that 90% of Syrian refugee children do not go to school. Some of them are now three years into their exile from home - what are the chances for them to complete their education and fulfil their hopes and dreams?

The current situation is all the more galling when we think back to the positivity and energy in the region in 2011, when the Arab Spring swept through autocratic states. These were uprisings driven in large part by young people, who wanted greater freedom and opportunity. Children born in 2011 in the Middle East had the prospect of a better future dangled in front of them - but that risks being snatched away.

The international community, as well as local governments and civil society, must do more to protect civilians now and meet their basic needs. But we have to go further and ensure that a generation of children is not lost to war and suffering. We have it in our power to make a difference, by working to keep children in school, even in conflicts, helping children overcome trauma and most importantly finding lasting political solutions in the region that put the lives of children first.]]>Central African Republic Teeters on the Brink of Catastrophetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.44537232013-12-16T19:00:00-05:002014-02-15T05:59:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
Dead bodies littering the streets. Children shot and injured in the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of families driven into the bush by fear, living out in the open with no food or shelter. In the capital, thousands huddled around a monastery frightened for their lives. I will never forget the fear in the eyes of the children I met.

The French deployment following the United Nation Security Council's decision to give a new stronger mandate to French and African troops could not have come soon enough. As CAR descends into further chaos, the question is whether it will be enough to stem the violence and create stability and protection. We need to urgently pull the country back from the brink.

Justin, right, with some of the victims of the horrific violence in CAR - copyright Save the Children

For the families I met last week, it is their main hope. As we drove through ghost villages on the road north of Bouar, a remote town nine hours from the capital, we knew something was wrong. But it wasn't until we stopped in one village that the full scale of what had happened hit home. Slowly villagers emerged from the bush, where they had been hiding. Whole families living out in the forest, vulnerable to malaria, pneumonia and other dangers.

One mother told me how marauding militia burned her house and shot her husband, forcing her to flee into the bush with her four children, the youngest only six months. Another family described their terror as over 130 houses in their village were burnt to the ground, leaving them destitute.

I saw first-hand the impact of this terrible conflict on children. At the Save the Children-supported hospital we met a little girl Celine, aged 6, who had been shot in the arm fleeing an attack. Sadly she was so badly injured her arm had to be amputated. Another little 3 year-old boy Serge had been shot twice, his mum and three brothers and sisters killed. Both were so traumatised they hardly spoke.

This is just the tip of the iceberg - 600,000 children are now in dire need. CAR is the world's forgotten emergency. 400,000 people are displaced, 70% of children are out of school and one third of the country doesn't know where their next meal is coming from. It is on the edge of even worse catastrophe. But the world can still act.

The decision to deploy a larger African Union and French force is a vital first step. But they must deploy outside of Bangui, to the remotest regions where so much of the violence goes on unseen. They must protect the children of the Central African Republic and help ensure conditions to enable the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to populations in need. The world must also be more generous. CAR faces a $109million funding shortfall.

As leaders come together in South Africa for Madiba's funeral I hope they will use the time to urgently explore what more the world can do to support the French and African forces and ensure enough aid is provided.

Recent history shows that when the world acts decisively it can avert catastrophe. When it dithers, lives are lost and suffering continues and worsens. We mustn't ignore this poor country and its children in their hour of need.]]>Mobile Technology Starts to Ring the Changes in the Developing Worldtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22507242012-12-06T19:00:00-05:002013-02-05T05:12:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
So remarkable has been the sheer volume of information - material that conventional journalism would never have been able to produce - that it's been dubbed a revolution - the so-called Twitter Revolution.

The mobile phone that changed the world for people of my generation by simply being a phone you could carry around, is now not just a device for talking to loved ones, business partners and friends, but an incredible multifaceted communications device.

What's not as widely known is the transformative effect mobiles are having on the lives of people in poor communities across the developing world. They are placing both information and money in the hands of people, often for the very first time. They allow charities like Save the Children to distribute and gather life-saving information in emergencies and they empower citizens to hold institutions to account.

The challenge for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO's) is to make sure we harness the potential of this mobile technology to continue the transformation and save lives across the globe.

The world is at a tipping point in our battle to reduce child mortality and lift millions more children out of poverty. Never before have we witnessed such rapid progress in reducing child mortality. In 1990, 12 million children died before the age of 5; last year it was 6.9 million.

That is still 6.9 million too many, but the progress we are witnessing means that we could be the generation to ensure that no child goes hungry, no child dies of preventable causes and every child gets a fair chance in life. The pre-eminent development economist Jeffrey Sachs has described the mobile phone as the 'single most transformative tool for development'.

From enabling a person to have their first bank account to allowing charities like ours to communicate quickly with people in emergency situations, the importance of this technology is clear.

And it's not just for the privileged few: there are now 5 billion mobile connections in the developing world, with 18 more being added each second. The need for an electrical grid, which reaches rural communities, has been leapfrogged by mobile technology; 80 million people across the world don't have access to electricity but do use a mobile phone. Solar powered panels charging multiple mobile handsets are now becoming common sights in rural villages I've visited across Africa and India.

These little boxes of plastic and glass are starting to revolutionise the lives of even the world's poorest people and there are many examples of just how they're doing it.

In Tanzania, like many countries in the developing world, obstetric fistula is a disabling condition that leaves women incontinent as a result of prolonged or obstructed labour. It can lead to chronic medical and psychological problems and women are often socially excluded, extremely poor, and geographically isolated. Corrective surgery is simple and inexpensive yet often the constraint is simply the cost of getting to hospital.

There are 3,000 new cases of obstetric fistula each year in Tanzania and around 24,000 women have been left untreated since the millennium. Using Vodafone's M-PESA scheme, women from the poorest communities receive the funds for transport costs to hospital. Within an hour of referral, funds are sent via M-PESA to cover the woman's fares. Using this simple infrastructure the number of patients treated for obstetric fistula there rose from 168 surgeries in 2009 to 338 surgeries in 2011, an increase of over 100% in two years.

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of 2.3 million child deaths and leaves 165 million more stunted - meaning their intellectual and physical development is undermined for life. In Northern Kenya, Save the Children, the Institute of Development Studies and Vodafone are exploring the use of mobile phone technology to collect data on nutrition outcomes (the height and weight of children) as well as hold heath providers to account when nutrition services (eg. Vitamin A supplements) aren't delivered. This will bring visibility to a problem which has been invisible because its effects only show when it is too late.

In other countries, agencies like ours are helping those struggling to provide food for their families by providing cash transfers to mobile phones, using Vodafone's M-PESA system. Technology like this facilitates us moving from the traditional model of giving food as aid to being able to give money. It means that people can spend this on fresh food for their family and not have to survive on sacks of rice or flour. By having the option to spend this mobile credit in their local market it also helps the local economy to grow.

Mobile technology can also be used to help people hold governments and even aid agencies to account. Britain is currently supporting an initiative to allow people to report corrupt officials to ministers directly through their mobile phones. Every citizen who contacts the Punjab province's local government, tax office, police, health or education services will receive free automated calls or text messages where they can report if they were forced to pay a bribe or experienced bad customer service. During a three year pilot, several corrupt officials were suspended or sacked.

Despite all these examples, we're only seeing the beginnings of the potential that this technology has to change our world for the better. This improvement will not be automatic. The challenges we face in making these changes, in ensuring the potential of children across the world is fulfilled, are not ones that can only be addressed by governments or NGOs alone. Increasingly governments, NGOs and businesses are working together and it's clear that with mobile technology, partnerships are key.

In the next three to five years, mobile technology will become a core, integrated aspect of emergency response work in humanitarian crises. We know that this explosive growth in access to mobile phones provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our ability to respond effectively in these emergency situations. If this is to happen we need to address three key themes - increasing accountability, building preparedness and prioritising collaboration.

We also know that with more and more organisations using this technology that we need to ensure everyone knows the rules of the game. A charter for facilitating shared commitments between partners following emergencies would allow us to make sure that we're making the most of this technology and the power it can give us to save more lives.

We could be the generation that stops children dying needlessly but to achieve the greatest impact for children we need to find new ways of working and fresh approaches. This week may have seen the 20th anniversary of the invention of the text message but the full potential of this technology has yet to be fulfilled. With bold, collaborative action from all stakeholders we can harness its potential to help transform the lives of the next generation and lift millions out of poverty.

Justin Forsyth will be speaking at the Vodafone Foundation and London Business School's Mobile for Good Summit in London on December 10: http://www.mobileforgoodsummit.com/]]>Aid - A UK Success Story That the British Public Should Be Proud Oftag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22426582012-12-05T05:04:58-05:002013-02-03T05:12:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
We have seen massive breakthroughs in reducing global poverty, and especially the number of child deaths. British aid has played a large part in this - a result of many campaigns such as Make Poverty History. The number of children dying from easily preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria has dramatically fallen - from 12million to just under 7million last year. If such progress continues, our generation could be the first to ensure no child dies from a preventable illness and that every child has both a life free from hunger and the chance to go to school. Aid is working and this Government deserves enormous credit for delivering on its promise to the poorest.

I saw the impact that UK aid can have on my recent trip to Somalia. When I met Nasteha, aged two, she was very ill from hunger and very close to death. Having walked with her mother for four days to get help she was severely malnourished. Over the course of a month Nasteha was given intense treatment and recovered returning to a bright and sparky two-year-old again. Helping the world's poorest children like Nasteha is the right and smart thing to do.

By investing aid particularly in education and healthcare, we are giving children a future that they can be a part of, growing up to be healthy and educated individuals who can participate in a productive economy. By helping build strong economies we are helping countries sustain themselves in the future, reducing the need for external donors to provide aid in the longer term.

For developing countries aid is a vital catalyst in bringing about all of the changes that are a prerequisite to the flow of private investment and long-term economic growth, from improved healthcare and education to better governance, administrative capacity, and infrastructure investment. This growth helps countries become more attractive trading partners, opening up new markets for regional and international firms and generating employment. Such global growth will be vital to the UK's future.

Africa's potential for growth and development is increasingly clear. Its growth rate of 4.7% per annum is better than Brazil's and for the first time in decades its share of the world economy is rising. By 2040 its work force is expected to reach 1.25 billion.

Nigeria's recent growth has seen the UK recently agree to double trade between the two countries to £8 billion by 2014. However, the country is Africa's most populous, with an estimated 158million people, and has a quarter of the continent's extreme poor. Nigeria still has high rates of child mortality and many children don't have a chance to go to school. However, our aid expertise combined with our investment in trade will help turn this around - improving Nigeria's prospects for its children as well as helping it become a good trading partner. For proof that it works we have only too look at Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Vietnam who were all strongly supported by aid and grew by more than 7% in the last decade.

Ultimately the true impact of aid on economic growth is what it means for future generations. To walk away from our commitments to aid now would be catastrophic not only for poorer countries but to the long-term global and UK economic recovery, and of course the lives of the millions of children that depend on a strong economy for their chance of a decent future.

That is why it is vital that we stay the course and deliver on the aid that we have promised.]]>A Tale of Two Citiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21920352012-11-26T19:00:00-05:002013-01-26T05:12:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
Hunger, war, and drought have turned this nation in the Horn of Africa into possibly the hardest place in the world to be a child.

Flying into its ravaged capital, Mogadishu, looking down at the bright blue sea and the white sandy beaches, it's at first hard to believe that this is the case. But as the battle-scarred buildings come into view, the old familiar shiver of fear and expectation runs down your spine.

At least the burnt out plane on the runway has now gone. I had been there over a year before on a Save the Children cargo plane full of life saving emergency supplies and was intrigued to see the difference.

I had read how Mogadishu was now on the up, with investment pouring in, the diaspora returning and a new president and cabinet. Wearing flak jackets and helmets, protected by armed guards, the Somali Capital is still far from safe - we did indeed see a frenzy of building activity, an army of workers renovating bullet riddled houses, hotels and shops. Property prices are going through the roof. Markets are now open. Restaurants are popular again. Somalis, always great entrepreneurs, are hustling and bustling in the various city markets. At the beach we joined dozens of young boys playing football - back to back games for miles up and down the sea front, in their Arsenal, Barcelona and Liverpool shirts. At the old port fish market local fisherman said business was good as they showed me their catch of giant tuna and lobster.

But this is only one side of Mogadishu. It's still a very dangerous place. The heavy protection gear and armed guards is ample proof of that. The noise of gunfire and constant threat of improvised explosive devices is with you at all times. Our local Somali partner organisation CPD - recently lost a staff member shot randomly by a militia. Our local Somali staff are very brave, risking their lives daily to deliver lifesaving aid.

For the poorest there are some slight and welcome improvements but there is no boom. When I was last here it was the height of the famine. Since then the food situation has eased and aid has helped save hundreds of thousands of lives. This was brought home to me when I met a mother and daughter who I had seen a year ago. When I first met Suban and Nasteha, aged two, Nasteha was very ill from hunger and very close to death. She had walked with her mother for over four days and was very severely malnourished. In front of my eyes our frontline health staff rescued her and rushed her to our clinic - a tent in the camp. She was pulled back from the brink and then taken to a bigger hospital, where after a month of intense treatment, she recovered. When I met her again a few days ago there were big smiles and laughter all round. A shy little healthy girl beamed at me from behind her mother's dress. I felt proud of our amazing local staff and partners who in the midst of great danger managed to save children like Nasteha.

But for many displaced families life is sadly still a battle for survival. The following day I met another mother and her daughter at a Save the Children clinic in a more remote camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu. Mulki had brought her daughter Yasmin, aged two to be treated for diarrhoea, the second biggest killer of children in Somalia. She had fled the recent fighting in the Afgoye corridor, where thousands had been caught in the cross fire between different sides and had to flee for their lives. Mulki had seen neighbours and relatives killed. Her husband had remained behind. She had given birth 13 days previously to a little boy, Zakaria, in a tiny shelter made up of sticks and plastic. She stoically told me how she and a heath worker had used the Save the Children birth kit - a scalpel, a plastic sheet, some soap and a tie for the umbilical cord. She was struggling to survive. Some 370,000 other displaced people in Mogadishu face a similar struggle. Many are children. It is hard to explain in words how vulnerable the children are in these camps. They are right on the edge. The difference between life and death is a thin red line of aid.

Outside the capital, Somalia's poorest are still facing emergency levels of malnutrition and hunger, recovering from a terrible drought and famine. The most recent assessment shows the number of people in urgent need of humanitarian aid is expected to exceed 2.1million in the coming months. Down from 2011 but still high. We need to stay the course with these families and not pull the rug from under their feet just as they begin to recover.

We need a twin-pronged approach in Somalia. Continued humanitarian assistance for the poorest families, but also aid to help them plant crops again and rebuild their lives. This will take innovative strategies to transfer cash and other inputs into remote rural areas of Somalia, often cut off and inaccessible. We also need to make sure another generation of Somali children don't miss out on education.

The international community deserves some credit for helping avert the worst effects of famine last year. As we go forward, we must stay the course, helping those still facing humanitarian crises and ensuring we help families build a securer future, free from hunger.]]>Aid Under Attacktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19128972012-09-25T11:37:47-04:002012-11-25T05:12:01-05:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
This is the reason why the Prime Minister deserves huge credit for being unequivocal in promising to stick to his commitments to help poorer countries. But just when we are making this dramatic progress and there is the chance to be the generation that ensures no child dies from diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria or hunger, and that every child has the chance to go to school - aid has come under unprecedented attack.

Recent newspaper coverage would suggest that British aid is being frittered away; squandered on undeserving countries and wasted. It is right that tough questions should be asked about how Britain gets value for its money, and it is spent in ways which help the poorest most.

However, we cannot let all the progress that has been made and the potential that could be achieved be drowned out by claims that aid is ineffective, unnecessary or wasted. Because the bigger picture is that aid works. Aid that costs just a penny in every pound.

In the past decade more than 50million children have been able to go to school as a result of debt cancellation and increased aid. Most recently Britain helped to feed 3.5million people caught up in the East Africa Food Crisis. And our aid will vaccinate one child every two seconds, immunising 80million children in all, saving 1.4million lives over the next five years. This is the hidden story of success - that British aid transforms the lives of millions of the world's poorest people.

My visit to one of the refugee camps in Syria recently bought home how vital British aid is. The children I met told me about their horrific experiences, some who were tortured, others who had seen their loved ones shot and killed. All had had to flee Syria leaving everything behind. But they were safe, had been give the basic essentials and were receiving help to overcome what they had seen. All thanks to British aid.

Aid is not only morally right but it is in our interests too. By supporting developing economies such as China we create opportunities to trade, helping create jobs here in the UK. UK aid also helps protect our security - preventing fragile states becoming havens for terrorists. Giving aid to poorer countries helps creates jobs within them helping end poverty so that people can afford to feed their families and no longer need be dependent on aid.

Giving aid is part of our DNA. For 82 years the vast majority of British people have supported the UK's policy to help those countries in greater need and felt it the right thing to do. It has helped make the UK the global leader that we are today.

A recent poll found that 55% of British people think we should keep our promises to increase the level of overseas aid, a commitment mirrored by the coalition government. Just 27% say we should cut it.

It is tough at home, but we cannot balance the books on the backs of the world's poorest, ignoring the needs of those in greater need than ourselves. As the Prime Minister said: "To those who say we can't afford to act: I say we can't afford to wait."]]>Sitan's Race Against Hungertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16949702012-07-23T19:00:00-04:002012-09-22T05:12:05-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
Already vulnerable and hungry it didn't take much to tip her over the edge. Failed rains and increased food prices have left her family struggling to survive. They have literally run out of food. Everyday they eat a few bowls of toe - corn meal - with no extra nutrition from vegetables or meat. As a result, Sitan has become weaker and weaker. By the time I met her a few days ago she was severely malnourished. Her skin was peeling off her painfully thin legs, her tummy was swollen and she looked listless and ill. Already terribly weak , she then picked up rotavirus diarrhoea, making her condition worse still. She was close to death.

The story of Sitan is the story of a million children across the Sahel who, without our urgent help, will face starvation and death. We will save Sitan's life and our dedicated frontline staff will save hundreds of thousands of other children, with expert care and support.

But we will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis unless we deal with the underlying causes of hunger. Millions of children around the world live one step away from starvation. Already malnourished, it only takes a small shock to tip them into a much more serious crisis. Failed rains, higher food prices or political instability could push a poor family into a downward spiral. In Mali some families face all three.

The bigger picture of child survival and child well-being is much more hopeful.

At Save the Children, we recently launched our annual Child Development Index, which shows we have made dramatic progress in recent years in cutting the number of children dying from preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia and getting more children into school. In general, the report shows that conditions for children have improved in 90% of the world's countries since the late 1990's. But the same report shows that the one area we have made less progress on, and in recent years have even gone backwards, is hunger.

So what should we do? More food alone is not necessarily the answer.

In Niger in 2010, a year of crisis, 320,000 children had severe malnutrition. The next year, a bumper harvest only reduced this number by 13,000. Why? Mainly because food crises occur not only when food stocks are low, but when food prices are high. Food may be available - but poor families just can't afford it.

We need a package of measures to tackle this. We need to provide more help to small farmers to grow more food, but just as importantly , we need to ensure that families have the ability to grow or buy the right kinds of food with enough minerals and nutrients to help growing families develop. We also need to have more ambitious social protection programmes to help insulate poor families in bad years. This can be as simple as giving them cash to buy nutritious food so their children don't become severely malnourished. This helps poor families and children and boosts the local economy.

We need more programmes to help mothers learn about which nutritious foods work best and to promote breast feeding. Early action by governments and donors to prevent emergencies becoming full blown disasters will be also critical. This means building sophisticated early warning systems and allowing charities the flexibility to respond when necessary and not wait for international outcry of a disaster - which usually comes when the problem is already chronic.

But bigger than all of those, there must be the political ambition - and a practical plan - to change the way the international community works to help communities build their resilience and end these everyday emergencies.

Tackling child hunger is not impossible. We can defeat this stubborn scourge of our time. But we will only succeed by addressing the immediate crises and the underlying causes together. The upcoming Olympic hunger summit is a chance to do just this. To begin the biggest push in history on hunger. To make sure Sitan and millions more children like her don't face a blighted future.

I hope you will join our race against hunger by calling on David Cameron and other leaders to make this Summit the start of a push through to 2013 to make hunger history. It sounds impossible but, as I saw in Mali, with the proper will and the right ideas we can succeed. Join us.]]>Shout of Africatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14277122012-04-16T05:30:05-04:002012-06-16T05:12:01-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/Today programme, little could he have known that a Twitter Storm was about to rain down on his head.

BBC radio's flagship had chosen to focus attention on the new opportunities opening up across the continent with a year-long series of broadcasts from the West African nation. It's a good place to start. There are green shoots of recovery there, though their problems, not long after the end of a vicious civil war, are still numerous.

It's with this in mind, that Today had prepared a whole programme's worth of coverage - interviews, packages and features - with Humphrys anchoring from Bong County, four hours drive from the capital, Monrovia.

Within minutes of going on air, the Twitter- and blogospheres were alive with comment - much of it complimentary, but a lot, particularly from Africaphiles, most certainly not.

Paul Vallely, the respected Independent journalist, told his Twitter followers that the programme was a "disgraceful concatenation of patronising, prejudiced, negative sneering stereotypes".

Another Africa expert, columnist Ian Birrell described the BBC's view of the continent as "myopic" and "tosh". He added: "Sadly, this is the view of Africa perpetrated by charities - and this is what happens when the BBC acts as promotional tool for their causes".

The Director of the Royal African Society, Richard Dowden, wrote an open letter to Humphreys turning some of the broadcaster's comments during the programme on its head.

"'You can't come here with European eyes', you say. But that is precisely what you and the rest of the British media have been doing all this time", Dowden wrote.

Whilst generally praising the ambition behind the programme, he added that the BBC could do more for Africa than any amount of international aid by reversing their decision to cut the number of reporters in the region.

"£1 spent on a good BBC World Service does more for development in Africa than £100 spent on aid".

There were also plenty of positive comment. Channel 4 News's Jon Snow called the programme "brilliant" and "sensitively reported". David Aaronovitch called it "lovely stuff". Many members of the public were equally supportive.

Let me declare an interest here. It was from our office in Bong County that John Humphrys anchored the initial broadcast, though we had no influence on the content.

We are, however, tremendously excited to support the project, because it was, and will be, a fantastic opportunity to give a rare, on the ground account of the exciting changes and challenges in one country in Africa. Through African eyes.

Today has a certain style, a style that attracts millions of listeners every morning. To change that combative, opinionated, way of broadcasting just because they were reporting from Africa would have been wrong - and far more patronising than anything Humphrys said this week. I liked Today's focus on both the progress in Liberia and the more difficult issues, like secret societies and female genital mutilation, that are often seen as too sensitive to mention.

Today's millions of listeners are intelligent enough to cope with nuanced debate - that's why the programme is so successful. There will always be positives and negatives. As Richard Dowden said in his letter, we need to cover both if we are to reflect fairly African diversity.

We heard African voices, lots of them, from all walks of life. This is what's needed, because people at home can identify with and understand the problems they face - and because these are the voices we don't normally get to hear.

Yes, perhaps we could have heard more about the country's many successes as it lifts itself up from the terrible civil war, but hopefully this will come in later visits.

The key learning from Wednesday's broadcast is that we don't have to portray Africa as hopeless to raise money or engage listeners. Inspiration and personal stories are enough, and from the many calls we took at our offices, they reach people in a different and more profound way than easy stereotypes.

So Today should keep its nerve on this, despite the dissenting voices. We want the show to be honest about telling Africa's story in the same way that it reports everywhere else in the world. If that means being critical, sceptical or even occasionally flippant, then so be it.

I'm thoroughly looking forward to hearing the next instalment from Liberia. The challenge for BBC radio and its listeners is to give this experiment a chance to change the way we think about Africa.]]>Time for Change at the Top: Why the Next President of the World Bank Must Put Poor People Firsttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14233812012-04-13T10:00:48-04:002012-06-13T05:12:01-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
Three excellent candidates have been put forward, all of whom have strong leadership skills and are familiar with development issues. Obama's nominee, Jim Yong Kim, although a US citizen, was born in South Korea and has worked as director of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization. The Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has worked at the top levels of the World Bank and is supported by the whole of the African Union. Jose Antonio Ocampo is former UN Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs and former finance minister of Colombia - credited with steering that country through the worst of the various financial crises that have struck Latin America.

The choice is a critical one, with wide-reaching implications for poor men, women and children around the world. There are just three years to go until the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals. We have made enormous progress in recent years in cutting child and maternal deaths and getting children into school. A cause for hope. But to hit the targets will take an enormous push. Whoever the Board chooses will have enormous responsibility to lead this charge to accelerate change to lift millions of people from extreme poverty, hunger and disease.

The best new leader will ensure that bank is ambitious, accountable and has the interests of the world's poorest people and children at its heart. Hands-on experience of fighting poverty in a developing country, and an understanding of the complexities and opportunities involved, would be an enormous help.

The next president will need to lead the organisation in a changed world. There has been great progress in reducing poverty but huge challenges remain - from global hunger, to climate change, to increasing inequality. It will be imperative to involve developing countries in the Bank's decision-making - and to ensure that reforms continue which make the organisation more democratic, more accountable, and more reflective of a new global order.

There are persistent outrages that the new president should put at the top of their to do list. It is unacceptable that a child born in Niger is 30 times more likely to die in infancy than a child in the UK. That in 2012 so many children still die from diarrhoea and pneumonia - an upset tummy and a chesty cough. That 170 million children never grow up to fulfil their potential because they are stunted before their second birthday through lack of nutritious food. And that so many children never go to school, while many more that do get a poor quality education.

To begin to banish these inequalities and injustices, the new president will have to work with national governments to prioritise sustainable growth and investment in people, especially in health and education. And to promote and protect national assets and services that serve all populations equally, including a clean environment.

All three candidates have the experience to take on these challenges. But Ngozi and Ocampo's work in developing countries place them particularly well to lead a more effective World Bank.

The Economist put it well recently when it said, "When economists from the World Bank visit poor countries to dispense cash and advice, they routinely tell governments to reject cronyism and fill each important job with the best candidate available. It is good advice. The World Bank should take it."]]>Children in Niger Need Urgent Helptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13441722012-03-14T08:11:59-04:002012-05-14T05:12:01-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
People like Habeche, a 60 year old lady who told me that she has never witnessed hunger as bad as this year. She and her family have been forced to eat leaves and forage for fruit. Or Mariamma, who has a four-month old baby but only enough food to have an evening meal twice a week. Or Bassira, who has been looking after her children and elderly father since her husband left the village to find work over three months ago.

Action now will improve these families' chances of survival. Earlier this year, Save the Children reported that failure by the international community to act on early warnings of a hunger crisis in East Africa in 2011 led to thousands of needless deaths and millions of pounds in extra spending. The same will happen again unless other governments follow the UK's lead and pledge money to fund a timely response to the Sahel crisis.

If international donors do not make sure money is pledged and delivered within a month then many children who are already malnourished could be pushed over the edge. Children like Nora who I met at a clinic in Koona in southern Niger. He is 12 months old and his mother died of diarrhoea so his great-grandmother looks after him. She bought him to the clinic to be weighed: his body weight is half what it should be.

There are too many children like Noora in West Africa. Research carried out by Save the Children teams in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, shows that because of crop failures, livestock deaths and skyrocketing food prices, thousands of families will soon be unable to afford enough food and water to survive.

According to our research, the poorest families in Niger will only be able to afford two-thirds of the food they need to stay alive. In parts of Mauritania, the entire maize crop has failed, pushing up the price of other staples. Similarly, in Mali, almost the entire rice crop has failed, doubling the price of millet. And in Burkina Faso, sorghum and peanut harvests are almost half of what they should be.

And it's getting worse. The UN, amongst others, has predicted that the price of basic goods will continue to rise over the coming months, increasing the numbers affected by the crisis. We need to act now to prevent what is already a worsening crisis from snowballing into a catastrophe.

Save the Children teams on the ground are already scaling up food and health work. Last week in Niger I worked with some of our frontline community health workers in the remotest villages, to identify and refer malnourished children to clinics where trained nurses give them food supplements. They are also giving pregnant mums fortified millet. In one area alone we have trained and deployed 600 volunteer community health workers. We are also running a cutting edge cash transfer programme, which has allowed poor families who have lost their crops and income to survive the lean period.

Earlier this year Save the Children launched a £30 million appeal fund this vital work - but so far that appeal remain less than one-fifth funded. Unless we get more money soon, our ability to keep working with families like Noora's will be challenged. International donors need to do their bit too. The UK government and the European Commission have shown strong leadership and we commend them, but the UN needs to keep momentum going by convening a pledging conference to get all donors to commit their fair share.

At the clinic, Noora's weight was shockingly low, but Save the Children nurses were on hand to give him a food supplement to build up his weight and energy. He should survive, but others may not be so lucky. Their fate lies in the hands of international community. Let's come together and learn the lessons of the past. Because action now will not only save lives but be much cheaper than if we wait till the TV cameras finally take notice.

Save the Children are on the ground and responding to the emergency to find out more visit the website here
]]>The Poorest Must Not Pay the Heaviest Pricetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13410002012-03-13T05:40:59-04:002012-05-13T05:12:02-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
She skips her own meals to be able to give food to Luca, and is constantly worried about money. Rachel has been told she'd be better off on benefits, but she wants to work.

Save the Children supports the government's efforts to make work pay and Universal Credit will do this for many. But our research shows that the scheme has one massive blind spot. There's not enough money to make sure everyone is better off. The government admits that under the proposed changes, 1.1 million families with children will lose out. And single mothers like Rachel will be hit particularly hard - losing up to £68 a week if they choose to work more than 16 hours. Second earners (usually women) will suffer too.

There are already too many children in this country going without basics like proper food or decent clothes. One in three kids in the UK lives in poverty - and perhaps surprisingly, the majority of them are in working households. All too often, there's just not enough money left over once childcare, rent and other bills have been paid. Universal Credit was supposed to change this, but unless the flaw in this otherwise well-designed scheme is fixed, a quarter of a million children will be pushed further into poverty.

The government has promised to help anyone left worse off as a result of the changes - essentially protecting their previous level of payments for a limited period of time. But they haven't said how long this transitional safety net will be in place - nor are they extending it to new claimants. So, sooner or later, poorer working mums will lose out. We think the government should fix the flaw in the scheme now - rather than relying on a retrospective stop-gap.

Every working parent knows it's tough juggling long hours and raising children. It's even tougher if you're on your own. These mums deserve support - not more hardship. If the proposed system is not amended, Rachel and Luca will be around £85 a month worse off. Given how close to the edge they are already, this is a very serious prospect. Rachel told Save the Children that it makes her angry that she'll be punished for wanting to work to feed her child.

Working mums have already seen the worst of the economic crisis. Childcare support has been cut, female unemployment has just topped 1 million, and housing benefits have been taken away from this group. More than half the mums we spoke to told us high childcare costs were the main reason they couldn't work or might have to stop. So working mums were already in the eye of a perfect storm - even before Universal Credit came along.

Universal Credit will help many families - couples in which only one person is earning stand to benefit, as do single mums on fewer hours. But this shouldn't happen at the expense of others. Our new Mums United campaign, which launches today ahead of Mothers Day and the Budget, calls on the government to boost its spending on Universal Credit so that mums working longer hours keep more of their incomes and get support with childcare. (You can sign our petition here).

The reasons for the economic crisis are complex, but one thing is for sure - it's not the children's fault. Fixing the economy will mean making some tough choices, but the poorest must not pay the heaviest price.]]>The Fight Against Syphilistag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13125002012-03-01T00:00:00-05:002012-04-30T05:12:01-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
Global efforts to reduce the number of child deaths for under-fives has seen the number fall - two million fewer than were dying as recently as four years ago. But the number of newborn babies who die before they reach one month old isn't falling as quickly. Tackling syphilis could dramatically reduce these deaths.

If untreated during pregnancy, syphilis can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, low birth weight and the death of newborns. It is estimated that two million pregnant women are infected with syphilis every year and that over half of these pass it onto their unborn child. In Africa alone, this causes almost 400,000 stillbirths and newborn deaths every year.

Yet stillbirths, the majority of which happen in the developing world, aren't included in statistics on child mortality. And if they aren't being included the scale of the problem is overlooked and opportunities to tackle the problem are missed.

By failing to ensure that all pregnant women are screened for syphilis and provided with timely treatment as part of routine antenatal care we are missing a huge opportunity to save lives.

Diagnosing and treating syphilis before 28 weeks of pregnancy - so ample time to do so - is cheap and easy to treat. A simple shot of penicillin costs less than a £1 per child.

That's why today in London, the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership, a new partnership dedicated to tackling congenital syphilis, and on which I will sit along with organisations including The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Gates Foundation, is meeting for the first time. The actions that we need to take are clear.

We need to increase routine testing in pregnancy for syphilis alongside other conditions such as HIV and anaemia. We need to promote awareness about the importance of seeking early antenatal care and ensure that there are enough trained health workers available to provide this care and also to provide support during and after delivery. Finally, we need to prevent people from getting syphilis in the first place by ensuring that women and men have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services and reduce the unmet need for family planning.

Save the Children is contributing to the fight against syphilis by integrating syphilis screening and treatment into our programmes to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. We want governments and other partners to also do their part.

In the 21st century no child should die from syphilis and no mother should have to go through the tragedy of losing their child to a preventable disease. Progress we've made on tackling child mortality in the last few years must be built upon and tackling syphilis will do that.

Justin Forsyth is a member of the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership and Chief Executive of Save the Children. www.savethechildren.org.uk ]]>Hope and Heroes in Afghanistantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12763152012-02-14T19:00:00-05:002012-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Justin Forsythhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-forsyth/
The head doctor immediately referred him to a bigger hospital 60km away in Mazar-i-Sharif, and the nurses placed an oxygen mask over his tiny face to help with his struggling breathing. His mum held onto the bars at the end of the bed, wiping tears away.

Like many other newborn babies in Afghanistan, Ahmadullah had been infected from a dirty scalpel cutting his umbilical cord. Thankfully his parents were able to get him to the District Hospital in time, where he was expertly cared for and given a chance of survival.

This life-saving scene is part of a quiet revolution that is changing Afghanistan for the better. Not very long ago one in five children died here from preventable illnesses like pneumonia and diarrhoea and one in 11 mums died from causes relating to pregnancy or child birth.

Now new data by the Afghan government says deaths have been cut dramatically, to one in10 children and one in 50 mothers.

I saw first hand the reason why progress has been made. The heroes are frontline health workers - doctors, nurses and midwives. On my five-day visit to Afghanistan I saw again and again the difference they were making, literally transforming the communities they served.

In Balkh province, in the north of Afghanistan, I visited a village with two amazing women who had been trained by Save the Children: chief community health worker, Nafasgul, and volunteer health worker, Sediqua.

Sediqua showed me her map of the village. Every house was marked and she explained how she monitored every pregnant women and every malnourished child, and how she educated local families on family planning and how to prepare nutritious food.

She said only a few years ago all mothers delivered at home, very few families accepted vaccinations and sanitation was poor. Now, thanks to their efforts, the community is now fully behind the health and nutrition push. Babies are being delivered at a small local clinic by a trained midwife, and 85% of children are vaccinated.

But this progress in Afghanistan is threatened by a massive challenge that is still endangering the lives of millions of children: malnutrition. More than 30,000 children already die every year in Afghanistan because of malnutrition, and a severe drought here in the north of the country has left thousands more children dangerously hungry.

But not only is malnutrition putting these children's lives at risk now. If children become chronically malnourished before the age of two, they will suffer the effects their whole lives. Children's bodies can be starved of essential vitamins and minerals - not necessarily because they don't have enough to eat, but because they're not eating the right, nutritious food.

And this results in a condition called stunting. Children with stunted growth are weaker, shorter, are likely to have lower IQs and to drop out of school early. And if children become malnourished before the age of two, the damage can last their entire life.

Shockingly, in Afghanistan, nearly 60% of children are stunted - that's 3million across the country. Many families I met are only able to feed their children on bread and tea, because their crops have failed and the price of wheat has risen by 60% since last year.

Take Mohammed Jan, or 'Mohammed dear' - a tiny seven-month-old baby I met at another district hospital supported by Save the Children. When he arrived at the clinic he weighed a frail 4.6kg, less than some new-born babies.

His mum told me she had been forced to leave her home because of the drought, and she was unable to feed her baby son properly.

Thankfully community health workers had identified him as an urgent case, and he had been rushed to hospital. In the three days he had been there, his weight had increased significantly, and he was soon to be discharged.

Afghanistan is a desperately poor country and has huge challenges but I have come away hopeful by the resilience and fortitude of the Afghan people. And the progress they are making.

On my flight back from Mazar to Kabul I met the head of the Save the Children midwife clinic in Jowzjan - Dr Malia Enayat, who was coming to Kabul to do some training.

She is an amazing woman. In her province 10 years ago there were only four midwives for almost half a million people. At her midwife school, paid for by Save the Children, she has now trained nearly 150 young women. They each will each deliver over 500 newborns a year, saving thousands of mums and babies.

They, and the volunteer heath workers teaching mums about safe childbirth and proper nutrition, are the true heroes of Afghanistan and the reason for hope.]]>